We’ve all been there: that moment where we’re ready to toss a manuscript in the garbage. Most of the time, we overcome our momentary frustration and get back to work. However, sometimes a story simply won’t work in its current form. It’s time to throw it out and start fresh. In a post on the Script 32 blog, Mary Helen Norris offers advice for knowing when and how to do it.
“As a writer, it’s incredibly frustrating when a project doesn’t just click,” Norris says. “There’s a difference between a rough draft and the feeling I’m talking about here.” Norris encountered this problem recently with her own manuscript, a sequel to a mystery novel she wanted to turn into a series. “Characters were flat, the plot was at times incomprehensible, and there was no ending,” she explains. “There were very real reasons why this project had stalled out. So I tossed it.”
Blasphemy!
But maybe not. With the unworkable draft tucked away, Norris was free to start fresh, with an understanding of what didn’t work in her first try. She overhauled her plot, cut characters that had appeared in the first novel, added new characters, and altered the method of murder to something that made more sense. It was hard, but worth the effort. “Because of the things I’ve gone through, I’m a better and stronger writer,” Norris says. “Which means, in order to do myself justice, what I write today has to reflect who I am as a person and as a writer now.”
